ESTRUCTURA DE VACÍOS. Relación de vacíos

The first two years of thesis research were broadly focusing on a pitch of research that would provide the necessary scope to allow such a recovery of information. Utilising inter-library loans from British Library, which held issues of CIGE, enabled information to be gleaned to allow a rudimentary research project outline to be designed. Through access to these resources I was able to write up a list of ideal people to approach for interview (see below), and find ways variously to describe my research and its value in order to make appeals for information and/or assistance at academic geography-based conferences held by a range of professional geographical organisations: such as the Geographical Association (GA) conference in Derby (2006, 2010); the

2 _{This quote alludes to the generous gifting to this research publications and documents from the private collection} of a number of geography educators and academics interviewed during this research who in preparation for being interviewed had gathered together materials that were either duplicate or that they had no other use for and wished to pass it on for potential future reference and use.

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Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) (RGS-IBG) conferences (2007, 2008); and the International Conference of Critical Geographers IICCG) in Mumbai (2007). At the ICCG event an informal interview with Richard Peet, renowned radical geographer, confirmed both his awareness of the journal and his planned meeting with Gill and Anne Simpson to explore the possibilities of a CIGE/Antipode special issue. Similar possibilities arose from presenting/participating in specialist academic geography seminar series (ESRC 2010), departmental lunchtime seminar series (University of Glasgow [Human Geography Research Group: HGRG]; University College London, 2009), and RGS-IBG workshops (History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG), Oxford, 2012). Not only did attending such events pique recollections and memories, but people were very supportive with constructive critical comments and in proposing directions about where else to look for information. Not all seminars and conference attendance audiences were interested in the materials and that offered up the most notable leads in some ways. After being invited to give a paper by the Vice-President of the GA John Hopkins in a forum on ethnic minority access to geography at the GA’s annual conference in 2010, my reflections on the work of CIGE concluded to a silent audience of tense smiles and no questions. Running a workshop in Leicester in November of the same year as part of the ESRC seminar series on Engaging Geographies was notable in that a few longstanding geography education lecturers in attendance in the workshop stayed quiet and said nothing while other groups of students and academics explored the materials. The silences proved instructive and upon directly enquiring about the lack of questions at the session, the lack of response was explained away echoing the same sentiment as expressed at the outset of this thesis. These resources had had their time. Bitterly ironic and a stark contrast in comparison to the sixth form students wanting to know what gender and feminism was. Some people attending my presentations and talks forwarded to me what they thought might be useful and interesting materials from the time, while others were able to put me in contact with materials of which I had been unaware. As such, the various networks and spaces of conference and workshop provided a fruitful ethnographic space.

Moving locations from Glasgow to London in 2007 afforded me greater geographical ease of access to London-based archives through which to explore specific geography education resources. Based as a lecturer of students with academic English as a second language at University College London’s (UCL) Language Centre (Now Centre for Languages and International Education), sharing the Bedford Way building with UCL’s Geography Department and, further down the road in the same Denys Lasdun Brutalist-designed building, the Institute of Education, I was able to attend talks at the Institute and to use its library to gather further information from their archives and holdings. I was also able more readily to access the British Library and the British Newspaper Library – then based in Colindale (and, after its relocation embargo, located mainly at the British Library’s Kings Cross base, with other titles based at Boston Spas – to corroborate newspaper archives and coverage of debates about the journal series in Education sections of The Guardian and the Times Educational Supplement (TES). Additionally, attending lunchtime lectures held by the Department of Geography at UCL allowed contact and further discussions with Emeritus professors, who, after giving a lunchtime

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talk about my research, were able to give pointers to particular relevant events within the UCL Geography Department’s own history (Hugh Prince was interviewed formally; Hugh Clout was helpful with informal conversation, not-recorded). While some of these encounters do not explicitly concern themselves with the journal per se, they are nevertheless important in contextualising the different cultures of geographical knowledge and ideas during the 1980s and in reflections on the nature and shape of disciplinary identities during the latter part of the 20th_- century from the academic institutional perspective.

Being based in the basement of No. 26 Bedford Way allowed me to have a space where, during working days, I could interview those who might be visiting London or travelling through London while on sabbatical or else based in London who were able to come into London at a time convenient to them where I could arrange a room to conduct interviews. I was able to interview Frances Slater, Rex Walford and Europe Singh, while going to the Institute of Education to interview David Lambert, John Morgan and Gill (third informal interview).

3.4.2 ‘Upcycling’ geography education resources: on salvaging and recovery

Keeping in contact with geography education researchers working at the Institute of Education, it was David Lambert who told me, when I interviewed him in 2009 of a new archive being compiled by Ashley Kent with Frederick Soddy Trust funding. Something called the Geography Education Textbook Archive would be housed in the Special Collections store on Lambs Conduit Street in Bloomsbury and would hold over 4,000 documents donated by recently retired geography educators and geography education researchers. I had already been made aware from my interview with John Huckle in 2008 that, two weeks before I visited him in his home in Bedford, he had donated his archive of geography education materials to ‘Ashley’s archive’ (Interview with Huckle). Interviewing Rex Walford in 2009, he said the same, relating that his collection of geography education books from his life spent as geography education lecturer at the University of Cambridge had been moved ready for cataloguing by Peter Moss, the part-time ex-Inner London Education Authority archivist, who had come out of retirement to undertake the job for a few hours a week.

Gaining permission from Kent and Lambert to contact Moss, I was able to have a look through the archive as it was being compiled. What fascinated me most were the cupboards of publications ranging in shape, format and style, destined ‘for recycling’. Some were early-19th century books with broken spines, duplicates of more robust versions already catalogued and in store, while others were pamphlets produced by different teacher education centres, some lacking resources and pages, an example found being from Birmingham’s Development Education Centre (now TIDE). These cupboards contained books from the 1950s with descriptive stories about people and places with subtle and not-so-subtle narratives of people, power and belonging. Moss said that, if there was anything I wanted, I could help myself: I was doing them a favour. While only a few documents surfaced directly connected with specific individuals who worked directly on the journal series (e.g. collecting duplicates of Huckle’s What

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We Consume teacher guides), it gave me a flavour of how CIGE would have culturally shaken

mainstream ideas of the subject, as well as how vital these ‘othered’ documents were in illustrating the sheer diversity and enormous range of (type of) geography education material produced that simply failed to be included in the ‘official’ archive by nature of their material format. At the launch of the archive in 2010, I was honoured to be invited to speak about the archive alongside Walford. While he spoke entertainingly of the wealth and vibrancy of exemplars in the collection, I spoke of the wealth and vibrancy of the exemplars in the outwith cupboards.

The oxymoronic imperatives of slow/immediate research are amply illustrated through the methodological tales associated with gathering together CIGE’s archive, which itself spanned a diverse range of locations and sources in order to solicit tangible material evidence directly and indirectly connected with the journal from the 1980s, locating and recording the recollections of people involved with the journal, as well as the memories of those who might recall subscribing to the series and who were happy to share their recollections. Simultaneously, I was cross- referencing oral history information with other materials from a range of archives and archival spaces that might solidify areas contradicting key aspects of more well-trodden narratives about the journal series and the political and ideological energies that compelled its existence. In order to amass material data it would be necessary to make contact with people involved with the journal series, especially those from school geography education backgrounds.